Chapter 464

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Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitæ or Kabul tribes, calls them Ἀριστόφυλοι, Aristophyli, the aristocratic or noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issraël, children of Is (sa) raël, from Issa, “woman and also earth,” sons of Mother Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you. The names of the supposed twelve tribes of the Jews, and the names of the real twelve tribes of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans being far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the Israëlites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among them as Youssoufzic, sons of Joseph, in Punjcaure and Boonere; Zablistanee (Zebulon); Ben-manasseh, sons of Manasseh, among the Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar, now Ashnagor in Afghanistan, etc. The whole twelve names of the so-called twelve tribes are names of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. In any case, the names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re-transliterated, yield the names of the zodiacal signs and likewise of the mythical sons of Jacob. Where are the traces of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere. But there is a trace, and a deep one, that the Jews have tried to deceive people with the help of these names. For, see what happens ages after the ten tribes had wholly disappeared from Babylon. Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to have the Hebrew Law translated for him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high priest of the Jews, Eleazar, to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes; and the seventy-two representatives (of whom sixty were ghosts apparently) came to the king in Egypt and translated the Law amid miracles and wonders. See Butler’s Horæ Biblicæ, Josephus, and Philo Judæus.